Title: Mcgowanjm Wire 2012 Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Feb 26, 2012 Author:Various Post Date:2012-02-26 09:15:13 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:1295582 Comments:2390
Recall the joke evoked by Freud in order to render the strange logic of dreams: (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you.
Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments confirms what it hopes to deny-that I returned to you a broken kettle.
Doesn't the same inconsistency characterize the way radical Islamists respond to the Holocaust? (1) The Holocaust did not happen. (2) It did happen, but the Jews deserved it. (3) The Jews did not deserve it, but they themselves lost the right to complain by doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.
These conflicting positions are reflected in the views of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently questioned the historical reality of the Holocaust while implying that guilt for complicity in the Nazi genocide had led European countries to support Israel:
Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces, and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that, they condemn that person and throw them in jail. ... Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem? ...
If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe, like in Germany, Austria or other countries, to the Zionists, and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe, and we will support it.
This statement mixes the most disgusting insinuations with a correct insight. The disgusting part is, of course, Holocaust denial or, even more disgusting, the claim that Jews deserved it ("we don't accept this claim": Which one? That Hitler killed million of Jews or that the Jews were innocent and did not deserve to be killed?).
What is correct, though, is the reminder of European hypocrisy: Europe effectively paid for its own guilt with another people's land. So when Ariel Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said in response, "Just to remind Mr. Ahmadinejad, we've been here long before his ancestors were here. Therefore, we have a birthright to be here in the land of our forefathers and to live here," he evoked a historical right, which, if applied universally, would lead to wholesale slaughter.
That is to say, can one imagine a world in which ethnic groups would constantly "remind" their neighbors that "we've been here before you" (even if this means more than a thousand years ago), and use this fact to justify seizing their neighbor's land?
The big mystery apropos of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is: Why does it persist for so long when everybody knows the only viable solution?-the withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank and Gaza, the establishment of a Palestinian state, as well as some kind of a compromise concerning Jerusalem. There is effectively something of a neurotic symptom in the Middle East conflict-everyone sees the way to get rid of the obstacle, and yet, nonetheless, no one wants to remove it, as if there is some kind of pathological libidinal profit gained by persisting in the deadlock.
This is why the Middle East crisis is such a sensitive point for the pragmatic politics that aims to gradually resolve problems in a realistic mode. In this case, the true utopia is precisely that such a "realistic" approach will never work: The only "realistic" solution is the "big" one, to solve the problem at its roots. Here, then, the old motto from 1968 applies: Soyons réalistes, demandons l'impossible! Only a radical gesture that has to appear "impossible" within the existing coordinates will realistically do the job. So, perhaps, the solution "everybody knows" as the only viable one-the withdrawal of the Israelis, the establishment of a Palestinian state, etc.-nonetheless will not do, and one has to change the entire frame and propose a one-state-solution where everyone has equal rights."
